New Aquarium With Fish Doing Cycle - Worried!

Wow, you guys are giving this lady a complex with all your mixed information! Most of us have been in your shoes OP, myself included! We have our tank running since mid January and have gone from a 10 gallon to a 55 gallon and have a beautifully thriving aquarium. Though I'm still learning and have hiccups along the way lol

If you're going to use prime, stop using TSS. From my understanding the two cannot be used together. Prime should be used simultaneously with stability and water changes while watching water levels closely. TSS plus requires a one time dose and you leave the tank for 2 weeks. All bottles have instructions. Read them carefully and follow precisely. Someone with kore experience can correct me if I'm wrong.

As other have stated, keeping levels in check is much easier in a larger tank but based on your stock you can manage fine in this one if you sacrifice the fry. Though you will need a larger tank for the mollies.

If you can survive this and muddle your way through all the sometimes ill advised help here's some super helpful information on the nitrogen cycle.
Aquarium Nitrogen Cycle
Let this become your bible. It will help to understand what is going on in your tank right now and in the future.
Research everything. Seriouslyfish is a site I was told can be a super place to learn the basic. I use it for almost my the general knowledge for fishes I'd like in my aquarium.
Also, take this with a grain of salt, but aqadvisor can be a helpful tool to get a general idea of what your tank can hold, tank mated etc. But use it with caution. Good old fashion research and forums like this one is a better tool than any!
Fishkeeping can be super fun but also super stressful. Many times I thought about selling everything because I couldn't be the "fish mom" my little guys deserved. Time a patience are key. Pick a path and stick to it, you'll see the light at the end soon enough!!

I should also add that with your ammonia at the levels it's at, prime and stability with daily water changes of 30 -40% might be the best course of action. We need to get that ammonia down fast.

I can't remember reading your others posts but if you have prime now id do an emergency 70% water change, double dose prime and then start a daily water change regime until your ammonia lowers, and you start seeing nitrates.
Sion, TexasGuppy what are your guys thoughts? Am I on the right track with this advice?

 

Going to try this again.
Currently trying to cycle a new tank with 3 mollies, 4 snails and 10 baby fry. In a 10 gallon tank. (Yes, petco told us all the wrong information) so we added fish in right away. We used Tetra safe start plus and API Stress coat to dechlorinate. We added them at the same time. (more of petcos horrible advice). We are on week 2 and we noticed last week our ammonia was reading 8.0. No fish deaths. Just one snail death. Immediately removed the snail. We were told to do water changes for a week. 25%. To lower ammonia. 6 days later and it’s reading 4.0. How do we get this down faster? Added TSS and stress coat today in our water change. And thinking we may have messed up again. We are new to this and have no idea what we are doing. How do we get our tank to cycle without harming our fish? I am thinking any day now they could die from the high ammonia. Here is our tank set up and our readings from today.

I am still so confused on what to do. Should I still use prime? I added in TSS again today with our water change. The bottle doesn’t say wait 2 weeks and no one told us to do that either.

 

Seriously get some filter starter balls from greatwaveeng.com. In one week theyve gotten my brand new tank well into the cycling process.

Or see if petco would give you some gravel out of a tank since they pretty much killed your angel fish.

 

Something like this?

 

I am still so confused on what to do. Should I still use prime? I added in TSS again today with our water change. The bottle doesn’t say wait 2 weeks and no one told us to do that either.

Q & A With Tetra about Tetra SafeStart
That's a helpful q and a for TSS. To sum up about using prime or any dechlorinator
"In regards to ammonia products, yes, they kill TSS. Any type, whether a
chloramines remover or detoxifier, etc, anything that says it locks up
ammonia or removes ammonia. Do not add TSS for 24 hours after using
such a product, and do not add such a product for at least 7 days after
using TSS. The bacteria is housed in a special stabilized solution of
ammonia, so if you remove/lock up the ammonia, you remove all of the
food the bacteria require to live."

If you have used TSS correctly, wait 7 days at minimum before using Prime.

 

No these are little gel balls u put inside the filter

 

We used it right after we put in our dechlorinated tap water...

 

Something like this?

like these

 

Something like this?

You've added the TSS, I'd wait it out! You'll end up trying to many things to get the ball rolling and each thing will cancel out the next and put you at square one.

 

Didn’t use a ammonia remover besides the TSS

We only used 5 ml. Will that help our ammonia problem?

 

Didn’t use a ammonia remover besides the TSS

Did you use a water conditioner in the tap water when you added it to your tank?

 

Yes, API stress coat.

 

Hey, Nicole, thought I'd jump over here to help you out. The stress coat has dechlorinator in it. Like I mentioned earlier it might be a good idea to skip the TSS route and dive right into the prime and stability route. It can be a bit daunting but if you take it one step at a time you're fish and you will pull through it.

 

Still wait a week to use the prime??

 

Sadly you have been given bad advice by petco and now have to do a fish in cycle. Right now all you can do is to stay on top of your water changes, watch your fish for any signs of problems, and keep testing the water. I am not sure how much you know about beneficial bacteria, but BB do not grow in water, but on surfaces and inside your filter media.

 

We do not know much. I am trying to learn more that this happened to us. Our fish our showing some stress. (Chasing). The one being chased seems to gasp for air on top quite a bit but seems fine later on. Not sure if she’s just looking for food or stressed. They were fine when we first got them. Always swam together and now one is always pushing the other away when she comes near. The 3rd fine seems happy and healthy. We have been doing 25% water changes every day and it doesn’t seem to be doing much. Trying to stick to feeding once a day but the fry twice a day. They seem to go crazy if they don’t get fed more than once a day. The adult mollies.

 

The stress coat canceled out the tss. As soon as you can get Prime and stability and work on doing daily water changes in combination with those two products. If 25% water changes are not making a difference, up the amount to 30 or 40% water changes. Test daily, consistently at the same time for more accurate readings.
Reducing the food it's good, but you going to have to come to terms that those fry may not survive sadly but hopefully the others will.

Editing to add: if you can get Prime tomorrow, do an large volume water change, like 70-80%. Double dose with prime and start with that.

 

Does the prime and stability have directions? I feel like I’m not going to have any idea what I’m doing. Lol. Also our fry have been all good for a week and 3 days. 2 died in the beginning. But it will be ok if they pass. I didn’t expect them to live in the first place. Honestly they have added a bunch more stress. They are getting bigger every day though.

 

With stability, you're going to use a full cap full on the first day, then the next seven days add a half capful. The key with stability is to shake the heck out of the bottle. If you think its shaken enough, shake some more.

Because your ammonia is so high, water changes are a must and necessary. With stability you can use a dechlorinator, Prime, in conjunction with it. Prime will be one capful (5 ml) for every 50 gallons. Each thread on the cap is 1 ml. So you don't need a lot. In emergencies you can dose up to 5 times that amount (so for you 10 gallon, one full cap). Test your water daily to make sure your ammonia is low, and the see when the nitrites start to build up. That's when your cycle is going. When you're ammonia and nitrites are low but you start seeing a rise in you're nitrates you nearing end.

When you see your tests read 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites and 5-10 nitrates, consistenly, you're cycled.

 

Just to clarify prime does not “lock up” the ammonia if you go to their website the product specifically states that it will not affect the tank cycling. I’ve used it while cycling my 55 gallon aquarium and it didn’t effect the bacteria at all.

 

Thank you so much! Going to pick those up tomorrow.

The stress coat canceled out the tss. As soon as you can get Prime and stability and work on doing daily water changes in combination with those two products. If 25% water changes are not making a difference, up the amount to 30 or 40% water changes. Test daily, consistently at the same time for more accurate readings.
Reducing the food it's good, but you going to have to come to terms that those fry may not survive sadly but hopefully the others will.

Editing to add: if you can get Prime tomorrow, do an large volume water change, like 70-80%. Double dose with prime and start with that.

That kind of scares me. We have a breeding cage thing. The fry will most likely be harmed doing that. Will that ruin all of our progress doing a large water change?

 

I'm not familiar with livebearers or fry. I wish I could give some advice with that, but I think high ammonia is more likely to hurt them then a large water change.

 

Do not change your filter media to the balls, because you are mid cycle.

 

Idk if this is signs of ammonia poisoning or not. She keeps doing it.

Also tested our tap water for ammonia and it came back as 0.50

 

I'll have to let someone with more experience address your dishes behaviour. For you tap water you can treat with Prime and let sit for 24hours before adding the water during a water change. Like I mentioned, prime detoxifies ammonia up to 1ppm.

 

Quick fix bacteria starters are a good money making sceme but not a very good product

 

You just add them... not completely change. Workin for me so far!

 

One more question. I use stability before the prime? Or does it not matter?

 

We used it right after we put in our dechlorinated tap water...

Eirelav_mcgoo Thank you, waiting 24 hours after adding tss is the correct way.

Been following this thread for a bit, I'd recommend following the guidelines he/she gave ( sorry its 2018 ya know )..and if you need anymore help I'd start a new thread personally, I even got confused going through this one...

and welcome to fishlore!

 

I am still confused myself. Lol

 

Hello

I have read about your ammonia probem, baby concerns, To start with,
By changing your tanks water
daily you are probably killing the bacteria that eats the ammonia.
You should be adding bacteria supplement each time, and the tap water conditioner to remove any chloramine and chlorine.
You did not say what type of filter you have, but you can obtain from Petco ammonia reducing filter pad, (you can cut it to fit your filter.) filter pad made by imagitarium.

To the babies,
Be sure you have provided them with hidding places to get away from adult moilies, this can be plastic or real plants that the adults can not easy
Enter.

To the female moily chasing,
If she is the mother of the babies she my be protecting them, or if she's not and just pregnant, and about to give birth, she needs a private place to do so, away form the other fish that my eat her babies.

I hope this info is helpful to you.

 

Hi. The babies are in a breeding net. We don’t think she is the mom of them. We are thinking it’s the other female. The one chasing is fat and could possibly be pregnant too. She wasn’t chasing 2 weeks ago when we got them. They kind of stuck together like best friends. How do we reduce the ammonia problem then?? We have an aqueon 10 gallon filter. Also our tap water has ammonia in it. I did not know that until today.

 

Both at the same time is fine. Just make sure your dosing correctly. With prime, I'd dose extra, remember it can be used up to 5 times the recommended dosing. So for your 10 gallon, today I would do one full capful. Monitor your readings every day. Keep me posted!

 

So a 70-80% water change and add in stability and prime and things should get better? Do you add stability directly in the tank and prime in the tap? Also you said to wait 24 hours to let the prime sit in the water so what can we do today to try and lower the ammonia?

I am scared this big water change will shock our fish. Any way we can just do like 50%?

 

If you're really worried do the 50% change. The more water you remove with the ammonia that high the better. Today, add both at the same time in the water you're replacing. Then add to tank. After that fill your bucket with water and add prime then let sit overnight. Make sure you're temp is as close to the tank water as possible

 

Will let you know what happens. Hoping for no fish deaths Thank you again!

 

4.0 ammonia? fish shock is the least of your worries. 80% water change is a must. Ideally 50% water change then another 50% water change a couple of hours later.

That ammonia level has to be controlled quickly.

 

It’s been high for a week and none of them have died. I am wondering if our test is wrong and making us freak out

Our fry are even fine and energetic? Is this normal for a 4.0 reading from API master test kit. We got it off amazon about a week ago. Nitrites 0. Nitrates 0. Ph 7.4 and that is the high ph test

 

All I can tell you is that its very unlikely. Master test kits are the most reputable test kits in the aquarium hobby.

Take a sample to your LFS for a second opinion. Not a LFS that uses them test strips though.

Edit just noticed your doing a fish in cycle. In that case you should assume the 4.0 ammonia is very real as its not hard to get ammonia like that when doing a fish in cycle in such a small tank.

 

I picked up prime and stability and we are going to do a big water change. Anything else I should do?

Should we put the fry in the tank with the others or keep them in the breeding net??